My friend Betsey will cater, because I cannot imagine a memorial service without food. （I am that kind of Jew—I cannot imagine a gathering of people that doesn’t include food, and when I arrive at the WASP-y events at which you get a few sips of Riesling and a Ritz cracker, I am always disappointed, of course, but then a little bit impressed.） I’d rather feed people at the library than have everyone come back to the house. I know that some people will come back to the house come hell or high water, but if there is nice food at the library, people who didn’t really know Brian may decide to pass on crossing the street and visiting with us and make the most of the library spread.
I walk over to the library before the service, and it is all muted chaos: Jack cannot figure out the sound system so we can play Bill Evans. There’s a problem with the microphone that the minister needs to use. Betsey tells me that there are not enough glasses. I don’t remember how any of these things are sorted out. I go back to the house and put on more lipstick and I return to the memorial service, granddaughter Isadora in tow. （Eventually the twins will come sit on my lap, as well, and the three of them squirming for space and sobbing over their beloved Babu is a great distraction. If I cried during the service, I’d be surprised to hear about it.）
My daughter Caitlin is at the door to the library, guiding people into the community room. She looks enough like me that for lots of people—our dentist, our former neighbors, a college boyfriend—no other signage is needed. People will come up to her for the next hour, to cup her face in their hands, to look at her version of my face and turn left, as if she’s an actual sign, to ask for help in finding a seat, shedding a coat. In twenty minutes, Caitlin will have to move out of the lobby because there’s no room, and people will gather, on this sunny Saturday in February, outside on the library lawn and in the corridors within the building, between the kitchen and the restrooms. I never even see the people in the hallways or those standing outside.
The first person I see in the chairs is my editor, Kate, sitting in her elegant, composed way, holding her coat, a manuscript and a pencil on her lap, and editing while she waits, which I find lovely and reassuring. I remember going to the funeral of her husband, Forde, and the whole difficult year after that, and I did wonder how she had managed then, and seeing her in the folding chair, respectfully leaving room for the reserved seats in the front rows, I’m ashamed to remember that at the time I doubt I asked her more than twice about how she was doing. I know I did and said the stupid things that people do and say and I am resolved not to mind what anyone says today, no matter what.
（And there are some doozies, which I find cheering, even in the moment of receiving them. Many people remind me that he was too young, that it was unexpected, that they never knew he had Alzheimer’s, that he surely had some good years left, and that I must be devastated. One person tells me that some days I will feel pretty good and other days, I’ll want to die. Really die, she says.）
I recall my parents’ memorial services, but they were very old people, had outlived most of their friends, and were in assisted living. We had no trouble accommodating everyone in their apartment. I knew that this would not be like that, but I am not prepared for the throngs of people showing up for Brian. My sister and her husband arrive early, and my sister looks vulnerable and ferocious, in her worry for me. People I expect to see and people I never expected to see fill the seats: his book club; his stained-glass teacher; a group of volunteers from Planned Parenthood, where he spent every Saturday morning escorting women from their cars to the clinic, always kind, always restrained, even when he itched to throw a punch at the screaming protestors. （It’s such a great combination of my interests, he said.）
The next group of people to walk in are ten big white men, in navy-blue blazers and Yale ties, bulldogs or crests or Ys. Make way for the small fry, says one man, around Brian’s size, pushing through the other, bigger men. He holds both of my hands and tells me that they all loved Brian. One man tells me he flew in from Arizona, and afterward he heads right back to the airport. Each man pats me or holds my hand and then they line up at the back of the room, shoulder to shoulder, legs apart, his sentinel. There is no transgression among them that I couldn’t forgive.
Some of Brian’s family come a little late and there is awkwardness over the seating, but everyone manages to be seated and our minister pulls us all together. I don’t have a minister, but this minister is our friend, who married Brian and me in 2007. She had been Brian’s minister during his Unitarian phase, and she was enough of a friend to me years ago to mention to me, when she heard he and I were serious about each other, that she thought Brian had a drinking problem and some wild ways. I didn’t mind her telling me and she didn’t mind marrying us a year later, so the friendship continued, and she gave a warm, affectionate, compassionate eulogy while gracefully introducing the speakers, and I kept thinking, as she spoke, Oh, darling, you would love this.
Allegro Ma Non Troppo
Life, you’re beautiful （I say）
you just couldn’t get more fecund,
more befrogged or nightingaley,
more anthillful or sproutsprouting.
I’m trying to court life’s favor,
to get into its good graces,
to anticipate its whims.
I’m always the first to bow,
always there where it can see me
with my humble, reverent face,
soaring on the wings of rapture,
falling under waves of wonder.
Oh how grassy is this hopper,
how this berry ripely rasps.
I would never have conceived it
if I weren’t conceived myself!
Life （I say） I’ve no idea
what I could compare you to.
No one else can make a pine cone
and then make the pine cone’s clone.
I praise your inventiveness,
bounty, sweep, exactitude,
sense of order—gifts that border
on witchcraft and wizardry.
I just don’t want to upset you,
tease or anger, vex or rile.
For millennia, I’ve been trying
to appease you with my smile.
I tug at life by its leaf hem:
will it stop for me, just once,
momentarily forgetting
to what end it runs and runs?
* * *
—
Three of his dearest friends speak about him. John Paul, his friend since the Seventies, evokes Brian the most for me. Their friendship transcended all kinds of differences, and their love of each other and of fishing bound them. John Paul speaks at length about Brian and their happy arguments and political discussions and at length about fishing, and even as part of me thinks, That’s a lot too much about fishing, really—the other part of me feels that my husband and his long, boring stories about fishing have been beautifully brought to life, and I am so grateful. His friend Mark talks about their wanderings around New Haven and their big meals. He says that he asked Brian if he had any regrets in life and Brian finally came up with one regret: that he’d given away his vinyl-record collection. Mark says he was astonished that Brian had only one regret and it was that. I think, That’s Alzheimer’s for you, and then I think, Maybe not—my husband did not regret much, and wasn’t that great?
His friend Tim talks about Brian’s best big-brotherly qualities, Brian even going to watch Tim coach his high school lacrosse players, and there is love visible in the room. My mother-in-law, who had not planned to speak, comes to the podium and introduces herself and says that she has learned a lot about Brian today, his adult life in Connecticut, and I think she recognizes this in a way that is both lovely and sad.